


Requited

by Spylace



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Mirror Universe, Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Blasphemy, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Jim takes a while to catch on, M/M, Mirror Universe, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:04:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In every universe, gods are vengeful and petty. Cupid is no exception though all he’s ever wanted was a bit of faith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requited

**Author's Note:**

> Repost!
> 
> Misuse of mythology ahead. I know Cupid's counterpart is supposed to be the god of war but eh, it just turned out this way?

The first time he met James Tiberius Kirk was on a shuttle bound for San Francisco. He was in the bathroom; a flight attendant was on her knees, massaging his dick through the cloth. Kirk had barreled in unannounced, tired of waiting. But once he saw what was happening, the young man simply quirked an eyebrow and leaned back against the door to watch the show.  
  
After shooting his load down the woman’s throat, he pulled her to her feet and slowly licked her mouth clean, enjoying the taste of himself on her tongue. “Thanks sweetheart.”—he drawled, a fond pat on her ass as he sent her on her way. The flight attendant looked disoriented and thoroughly debauched, easy pickings for the pack of dogs waiting outside. But as much as his cock appreciated a good workout, he wasn’t about to waste what limited energy he had to save her sorry hide.  
  
She only had Hera to thank for that, he thought darkly.  
  
“See something you like kid?”  
  
Kirk leered, looking as though he would like nothing better than to pick up where the flight attendant had left off. Shaking his head, Cupid gestured to the small sink and an even smaller toilet. “The place is all yours.”  
  
As he exited the bathroom, he purposefully rolled his shoulders and brushed up against the blond.  
  
He caught a flashforward: the sudden burst of lightning across empty space, a dead planet and his aunt’s fury, the chill of the tiles against his back, fireflies in his eyes, blood across his hands and sweat-slick bodies balanced on the thin edge of the bed. He took the only empty seat in the shuttle, which turned out to be one right next to Kirk and raised an eyebrow when the blond returned. He smiled, all teeth.  
  
Things were about to get interesting.  
  


***

  
At the Academy, he assumed a new identity—Leonard Horatio McCoy, died in 2154 in a tragic shuttle crash that claimed the lives of 43 others, survived by his wife and two daughters, now living, aged 35. With the frantic couplings on campus of the fairly un-sexy kind, he earned a reputation as a slitter of throats and took his place as the son of war.  
  
Adrestia was thrilled for an excuse to see her big brother drenched in red; she had been away on a crusade against the Cardassians when he killed his adulterous wife. She presented him with a set of scalpels, appropriate since he was now supposed to be a doctor. Had he been a more sentimental sort, he would have transmuted them to lead and gold. But one was useless and the other was poisonous to him so he kept the steel blades. Hephaestus, the patron god of the doomed Vulcans, had forged them personally.  
  
Fittingly, the first person he used them on was Kirk. The kid had been slapped with a misdemeanor charge—his crime, getting caught in the scene of a brawl, kicking and fighting like he had a fucking death wish. But of course, he thought, Kirk was only a mortal, one of his father’s many champions. He couldn’t see what they could; he couldn’t see the big picture and the future laid out before him, sweet and ripe like a Georgian peach.  
  
McCoy enjoyed it; cutting into the bruised skin and making him bleed. When he was done, he let Kirk blow him while he licked his blades clean. The blond eagerly choked his entire length down, his throat squeezing the head. He thought that he should have done this earlier, back on the shuttle, back when they first met. It was better than the chemical high of his arrows and twice as potent. McCoy gave Kirk his blessings and from that point on, he was hooked.  
  


***

  
However, unlike his sister McCoy was still the god of love. Without his wife's distracted worship, he starved, feeling hollow and cheapened any time an instructor and an unwilling cadet played the horizontal mambo against the wall. He was never short of willing volunteers but any encounters that lasted more than a week died, the Terran Empire too dangerous a place to play favorites.  
  
On the other hand, McCoy couldn’t die but it was damned inconvenient. He had already killed a man for gaping at him after putting a poker through his chest. And it scared him how much he preferred the half-snatched biting kisses from Kirk than the next convenient lay.  
  
Adrestia did not understand. Why would she? She was having the time of her life.  
  


***

  
After Kirk saved Earth, McCoy was thrown in the agony booth. A futile gesture—five hours later, he walked out on his own with his head held high, the newly-minted CMO of an imperial starship. He barely managed to curb his scorn for the admirals, tired and drawn but power crackling beneath his fingers like freshly charged batteries.  
  
In space, he stood unopposed. But still, even in the deepest recess of among the stars, his kind thrived like Ares who had grown rich and strong on the spoils of war, Helios who commanded many suns under his name. Dionysus who had grown idle under the indulgences of men and his mother who found love she couldn’t in the Terran Empire.  
  
The ISS Enterprise discovered many new worlds in her campaign, subjected some and destroyed all those who defied her. And they all fascinated him, the hundreds and thousands of children his fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins had borne, from the slug-like Lactran to the silicon-based Hortas, Klingons with their sagittal crests, Andorians and their vibrant blue skin.  
  
Some, he was surprised to see, had not forgotten their gods. The Platonians had cowered in his awake, beseeching for mercy as he rendered the mineral kironide inert. McCoy gladly took Philana, the queen of thirty-eight, as a prize and gave the vain thing a small bauble for her services. Stripped of their psychokinetic powers, they quickly surrendered to the Enterprise and her crew, the planet Platonius turned into an imperial outpost.  
  
Orion, which he had dreamed up for his daughter Hedone’s 1000th birthday, was delightful. The women there were primal in their sensuality, their pheromones just strong enough to give him a pleasant buzz not unlike indulging in ambrosia and wine. The men however, he found were not to his taste, too servile and willing to be led by their dicks.  
  
Still, he mused as a particularly limber slaver went down on him, they would be enough to flatter any woman’s ego. Though lacking the potent perfume of their fairer halves, the men of Orion were well trained. Even Hera, the uppity old bitch, would have a hell of a time resisting them.  
  


***

  
He was elbow-deep in a yeoman’s entrails, trying to fish out the broken corner of a food tray when he was called to the bridge. They were approaching an M-class planet; one he knew belonged to Hera’s domain. The planet itself was Empire-friendly though it was an open secret they traded with her enemies on the side. Kirk looked downright pissed when the chancellor refused to supply them with more dilithium, quoting the annual production levels and the decline in quantity.  
  
Had it been anywhere else, Kirk would have pressed a button and be done with it. But Jital V, despite all appearances, was the pioneers of space age, the forefathers of intergalactic warfare. Once they had established themselves across the known civilizations, they had withdrawn into their own pocket of the universe, content to peddle away their dilithium-rich moons. Whereas their armada had stagnated into bulky couriers and transport, their weapons technology was quite a different matter. Chekov, Sulu and Scotty had all but creamed themselves when they saw the defense arrays.  
  
Kirk spun in his chair, waiting for a suggestion or an excuse to throw someone in the agony booth. Sulu for once, wisely kept quiet. McCoy crossed his arms and grumbled something about being a doctor but subsided. He stared down at the planet, beyond the scope of the viewscreen, through the atmosphere and the bursts of static that made transporters unusable.  
  
The Jitals were dark, like an oil slick across a stretch of sand. They didn’t wear clothing, fluctuations in temperature didn’t bother them much, but they adorned themselves with feathers and furs, scraps of silk if they belonged to the privileged class. They worshipped Hera as their one god—‘Juno’ they called her, the syllables mangled as though forced through underwater.  
  
“So the Empire wants an excuse.”  
  
They all looked on appreciatively as Uhura crossed her legs. She seemed pleased at the attention though Spock puffed up visibly. McCoy stepped closer to the captain. The others might have had sense not to provoke the half-Vulcan but Kirk never did. He gave him a smile sharp enough to cut and the god lamented the peculiar etiquettes of the new world that made it impossible to lay claim to the blond in front of everyone else. In the old days, humans would have been on the ground kissing dirt for him to pay a visit.  
  
“Precisely. The Empire is willing to cut its losses but unless we figure out a way to foil their defense system, it won’t matter.”  
  
“The shuttles still work right?”  
  
Kirk pierced him with a calculating look, cocking his head when he saw the gritted teeth and the stiff arms held behind his back. “I’ve got an idea.”  
  
Everyone looked up at this proclamation. Even Spock looked _fascinated_.  
  
“You want to take a shuttle down planet side.” The captain said slowly. “This must be good.”  
  
“Like I said,” McCoy repeated, dry as dust. “I’ve got an idea.”  
  


***

  
It was devastatingly easy once he claimed that he was a devotee to their one god. As a doctor, he was the ship’s equivalent of a healer or a priest. When he showed them his offering, a young ensign who happened to look up when he was called, he was given allowance into the temple at the heart of their city. But just in case Hera appeared to stick him with a lightning bolt, he had to give Kirk plausible deniability.  
  
" _Sex pollen_?!"  
  
It was almost worth the shuttle ride to see the bridge crew’s stupefied expressions.  
  
On Jital V, he and a handful of security were greeted by a welcoming party; the chancellor presented to him all but gift wrapped. The Jital immediately lost its tar-like sheen, the vague impression of its eyes bulging as its neck fluttered and swelled.  
  
The gill-like structures lacing its throat peeked out from its collar and beckoned to him with its spidery arms. The redshirt to his right bristled; McCoy pushed Bliley to the front, yoked like a sacrificial bull. The boy was scrawny, but colorful in his red uniform, his skin mottled black and blue and made compliant by a mild paralytic. McCoy stared on with impassive eyes as the ensign was led to a modified wheel.  
  
Within seconds, Bliley was little more than a smear across the gilded floor as were the security officers that had come with him. McCoy pursed his lips, knowing there was nothing he could humanly do if they chose to attack him as well. But he read the hunger in their eyes and knew that at least, the first phase of his plan had worked.  
  
“Leave us.”  
  
Quietly, sullenly, the others slunk away. The chancellor sided up to him again and this time, McCoy let it stay, stretched out a hand and let the ‘gills’ wrap around his fingers. He sipped the end of an arm which tasted sweet like poison. The chancellor moaned with a disturbing echo. “What have you done? What sort of devilry is this?”  
  
“I want you to do something for me.” McCoy licked his lips, thumbing the translucent strands  
  
“Anything, _anything_. Anything you want.”  
  
He held a scalpel to its eye and in the sunlit splendor of the temple; the Jital could see the silhouette of wings raised high above the man’s shoulders.  
  
“Darlin’, don’t forget to breathe.”  
  


***

  
“Got to say Bones, you’re wasted in medical.” Kirk whistled appreciatively at the sight of the proud chancellor strung up like a sack of meat. Deep mulberry-colored blood seeped into the imported Romulan carpet in steady drops. A communications piece was blinking red on standby around the CMO’s ear.  
  
McCoy turned around with a sated grin, a scalpel dancing between his fingers. He was relaxed and sated, positively euphoric.  
  
“Are you glowing?!” The captain gaped, incredulous.  
  
He disagreed. He was pretty sure he wasn’t but tried to tone down the utter joy he felt after the Jital’s homage and more or less spitting in his grandmother’s cheerios.  
  
“How did it go?”  
  
“Once we picked apart their defense system, the Jitals gave in and signed over their mining rights. Easy.” He stared suspiciously at the purple stains marring the doctor’s skin. “What’s this?”  
  
McCoy gestured to the chancellor’s twitching body.  
  
“Not mine.”  
  
Kirk’s nostrils flared.  
  
“Did he touch you?”  
  
He smiled. Eyes narrowing, Kirk said out loud, “two to beam up Scotty.”  
  


***

  
“ _Beg_.”  
  
“Fuck you.” Kirk gasped, clamping down on his dick like he was about to tear it off. McCoy chuckled, digging a broad circle into the blond’s thighs as his hips stuttered one, two, and came to a stop. Kirk moaned like a dying man, smothering his face in his ruined shirt and pushing back, whining when McCoy held him down and repeated, “Beg.”  
  
And it was as though floodgates had been opened as the blond broadcasted his needs through a fervent prayer. The ‘ _god_ ’, ‘ _please_ ’, ‘ _yes_ ’, ‘ _harder_ ’, and ‘ _right there_ ’ became his own nectar and ambrosia, the sustenance to feed his body and too much like love for him to acknowledge. He leaned down, licking a wet stripe down his back. The raised scars read like a book on his tongue as the blond shuddered into completion. Immediately, he rolled off, still hard and aching but unwilling to come inside the other man.  
  
“Damn Sawbones,” Kirk stared at him dazed, his eyes dilated like he had been dosed with Orion pheromones. “Sex with you is like a religious experience.”  
  
McCoy ruthlessly suppressed the urge to preen under due attention. It just wasn’t natural. The last time he had taken a less than abstract interest in a mortal, he had gotten _married_.  
  
“Kirk,” He said finally, slipping into his bathroom. “You have no idea.”  
  


***

  
Apparently, even he could be in denial for so long before wanting to drown himself in river Lethe.  
  
“I’m a doctor, not a hormone-driven teenager.”  
  
“This is who you are brother; you are the god of love.”  
  
McCoy pinned Himeros with a glare, knocking back a glass of bourbon.  
  
“That’s the god of _erotic_ love to you.”  
  
“It’s only a curse,” Harmonia soothed, “grandmother would not dare. Mother wouldn’t let her.”  
  
“That bitch will see me dead for what I’ve said.” He shrugged her off, his wings flaring. Cautiously, his brothers withdrew though the goddess of harmony remained kneeling at his feet. “It’s the nicest thing she’s ever done for me.”  
  


***

  
There was so much blood.  
  
“What is this shit?” McCoy demanded, peeling his gloves off when the sticky, tar-like material ate clean through the rubber. His fingers came up red, irritated, then smoothed back into a golden tan. Davis however, wasn’t so lucky. Kicking him out of the way as he began to scream, McCoy heard M’Benga order _“get him out of here!”_ before looking at the readings, paling as he realized they were losing him.  
  
“Dammit Jim.” He breathed, his hair standing on end when he saw Ker at the corner of his eyes. The nurses had just finished wiping the captain down when he began to convulse, blue eyes rolling to the back of his head.  
  
“Give up Eros.” Ker said, her breasts bouncing like bags of jello. “He is ours now.” She smacked her lips hungrily as she slithered to where Kirk’s ribs lay, glistening and pink under the surgical lights. He grabbed her just as they were about to touch, her skin as cold as ice beneath his palms. Amused, Ker smiled, her teeth filed to sharpness. “The queen of the gods has cursed you to be lovelorn. If you save him, your life is a forfeit.”  
  
“Not if I do this.” McCoy took an arrow and drew it across his wrist, its blade made of lead. The honey-colored ichor spilt across Kirk’s chest as he stared at Ker in triumph, the goddess of death shrieking in rage at what he had done.  
  


***

  
“I hope you’re happy.”  
  
Aphrodite’s children gathered around her like unfledged birds, even the rebellious Hedone collapsed into her grandmother’s arms. “You have killed our love.” She said, acid-tongued. She reached out to her favorite son, her movements filled with longing. “You have killed our passion.”  
  
Hera cleared her throat and looked on, denying the image of the winged god as it rippled and shed feathers like pearly tears.  
  
“It is of no consequence.”  
  
“You have destroyed our world.”  
  


***

  
Kirk lived. Nothing changed. The end.  
  
Except that wasn’t quite how the story went.  
  
It was hard to say who noticed first, perhaps Chapel who knew her boss well after serving together for nearly four years, maybe Kirk himself when he woke to find no vitriol forthcoming from the other man. The crew found itself disturbed and unbalanced at the near cordial reactions to their various injuries. Even Spock, in his Vulcan manner, lamented the lack of verbal challenges from the CMO.  
  
McCoy didn’t care, he couldn’t. He spent most of his shifts in a fog, doing what was required but no more and no less. There was no cause for reprimands; he was efficient and continued to produce excellent results. He didn’t understand Kirk’s odd looks or Sulu’s disparaging ‘ _Spock II_ ’s. In fact, he no longer knew why he remained on the Enterprise.  
  


***

  
It wasn’t long before Kirk came for him. Honestly, he was surprised that he had lasted as long as he had. He didn’t make preparations, he couldn’t die anyways—he had made sure of it.  
  
“What is going on?” He snarled, pushing him into the wall and squeezing his throat. “What happened on Dunus? Is it a new lover?”  
  
Saying _I was in love with you asshole_ seemed like a perfectly stupid thing to say so instead, McCoy sank down to his knees and undid Kirk’s pants like he was unwrapping a gift, breathing into the familiar musk as his cock twitched with the scent-memory. Kirk hissed as he McCoy swallowed his head, instinctively thrusting into the wet heat. If there was one thing McCoy had learned about mankind, it was that sex solved a lot of the problems.  
  
Or at least, he thought dully as his head was slammed against a desk, it delayed the consequences for a bit. Kirk curled a fist in his hair and pulled so they could see eye to eye. What he saw there were large parts anger but also a sliver of betrayal.  
  
Kirk shoved a hand down his pants, parted his crack and trailed down to his perineum before pulling at him in punishing strokes, slamming his head down once more when he tried to resist and buck him off.  
  
His dick filled and stiffened, uncomfortable in the confines of his regulation-sized pants. Kirk pushed it down and entered him from behind with minimal prep, raw and brutal, none of the tenderness he had shown before in their bedroom games.  
  
McCoy stretched, he tore, and he bled, ass flushing pink when Kirk slapped him hard, his dick popping free. He grunted as fingers circled his puffy hole and delved in, splitting him open like a wedge, little like as though a prize stallion was trying to push itself in. Sweat collected at the bottom of his chin and he breathed hard, white-knuckling the edge of his desk as though he was a mere mortal and this, his only choice.  
  
Kirk breathed harder, his worship like a blood sacrifice to Artemis the goddess of the hunt, Ares the god of war and ironically his mother, the goddess of love. He came inside him, painting his guts with his seed. It seared and it ached, though McCoy did not recognize it as such until Kirk threw him a towel and ordered him to clean up.  
  
“It’s over.” He volunteered, leaning against his desk. He wiped his mouth on his wrist, his stubble chaffing against the silvery scar. Immediately, he was pinned to the floor, black and green dots waning and waxing when his head cracked on the rug, an agonizer at his breast. His heartbeat slowed in torpor, Kirk grabbed his face and wrenched him close as though he could somehow _see_ the suspected lie.  
  
McCoy would have laughed but it was too late for them both; he was no longer the god who had loved his gilt-edged captain. He wasn’t much of anything anymore. The strongest he felt for the mortal man was a distinct indifference and a vague amusement that the captain of an imperial flagship was incensed by a lover lost.  
  
“You’re different,” Kirk said, turning his head this way and that. “Ever since Dunus, you’ve been different.”  
  
McCoy coughed, his room finally re-righting itself.  
  
“You almost sound like you care.”  
  
“Why didn’t you fight back?”  
  
He shrugged.  
  
“Why ruin a working relationship?”  
  
He should have been shot, the moment Kirk sensed deception, he should have been put down like a dog too tired for the chase. But he supposed that qualified surgeons were hard to find in their sector of space. And even if Kirk had tried, it wouldn’t have worked—wasn’t that the point?  
  
Kirk never came for him again.  
  


***

  
If the crew thought either Kirk or McCoy had weakened in the lieu of their separation, they were sorely mistaken. Kirk sent over five enterprising officers into the agony booth. But clearly, McCoy had the advantage of dissecting a nurse in front of everyone in the sickbay.  
  
Kirk took the pretty science officer Marlena Moreau to his bed. McCoy felt nothing. They never made any promises to each other. The lieutenant was attractive and smart; if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. When they fucked, it was in his name and he accepted the offering as it had been given. If he felt ill afterward, it meant nothing.  
  
He ignored it as his hands shook during inventory.  
  
It was nothing to him.  
  


***

  
Spicae I was 92% water. Save for its dry and rusty color, it looked like home. The crew looked hopeful at the chance of a shore leave. That was, until Spock began to rattle off the atmospheric contents, each raising their eyebrows higher and higher.  
  
“But you said there was life down there.”  
  
“Yes captain.”  
  
“And _latinium_.”  
  
McCoy processed this exchange with a dread. “Look alive people,” Kirk announced with no small amount of glee, looking more alive and interested than he had in a while. “We’re beaming down.”  
  
But something went wrong.  
  
Something always went wrong.  
  


***

  
The dominant life form on Spicae I was like sirens of the old, only they had a serpent’s tail instead of a bird’s body. They moved freely in their oxygen-rich world, decapitating all but three of the security team that had beamed down with the landing party. Lieutenant Moreau cowered in the bloody sand as the naga lifted her by the waist and wrapped around her body.  
  
Kirk stiffened but otherwise did not react. Within a few minutes, the woman let out a small wheeze and asphyxiated, going limp like a doll in the alien’s embrace. The red naga looked at her with a puzzled quirk of her head, coiling her powerful body beneath her torso.  
  
“Captain,” a Technician whispered urgently, “we cannot raise the Enterprise.”  
  
“ _What are you doing?_ ”  
  
McCoy blinked. His mother stood in front of him wearing a white negligee and enough lace to choke a Rigellian ox. She poked him in the chest with a finger, “you know better than that kiddo. You look and you’re going to want to go down there.”  
  
“I ain’t gonna just stand here and watch.”  
  
“Of course not.” Aphrodite sighed. “It’s not like the last time you tried to play hero, you almost ended up stuck as a green-eyed monster.” She brushed his hair back; her palms cool against his forehead. “If I had known that this was going to happen, I would have enchanted the little witch myself and chained her to Athena for all of eternity.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow.  
  
“You doubt my arrows?”  
  
“I don’t doubt your love.” She replied wryly, brushing his hair back, her palms cool against his forehead. “Cupid, I mean it. I can’t help you if you go down there.”  
  
“I’ll die if I go down there.” Aphrodite flinched. He stared back at her plainly, fixing the strap on his medical kit. He stretched his wings, wide enough for it to fill his entire office. “It doesn’t matter, thanks for telling me anyways.”  
  


***

  
Kirk landed at his feet like a bag of wet cement, one eye swelling shut just as its twin caught sight of him. The rest of the crew, some decapitated and others not, were scattered artfully around the sand. He didn’t bother giving them a second look, they, especially Marlena, could die for all he cared.  
  
He swiftly administered a hypospray and checked for broken bones. A shadow fell across his back and he lashed out, sticking his scalpel in the naga’s bellybutton. The snake fell back with a howl, writhing and stirring up the coppery sand as her companions closed in around her. He paid it little heed, replacing Kirk’s broken gas mask with his own. Immediately, his breath became caught in his lungs, the toxic air scraping his throat raw. He choked and retched, his stomach coming up empty in its forceful attempts to vacate itself from his body. Himeros, on the sidelines, watched helplessly as did the rest of his brothers and sisters, unable to grant even the simplest of words or phrases.  
  
He trembled as he spread his hand over Kirk’s stomach.  
  
“Kill him and be done with it!” Adrestia declared, supported by her brothers, fear and panic.  
  
Hedone, lusty and sensual, gasped—“Daddy, your wings!”  
  
A lump settled in his throat, present no matter how many times he swallowed. The scar on his wrist itched, the pale fold there-and-gone with a blink of an eye, shifting into a curse. He looked at his brothers and sisters, his family and friends who had come to see him in his moment of weakness. And he was struck by the realization of how meaningless all this was.  
  
If there was no love within him, he had no reason for being. If he could not have Kirk, there was no reason for being.  
  
Either way, his grandmother would win. He no longer cared.  
  
His wings disintegrated as did the image of the gods surrounding him. But he stared up, clear-eyed and awake for the first time in days.  
  
“Let us go.”  
  
The green-bodied naga, the largest among her sisters bowed and obeyed.  
  


***

  
Which came first, the bird or the egg? He was in the shape of a man but had the wings of a bird so which came first, the body or the wings, in amnion where he had been suspended awaiting birth.  
  
The mask covered his face too late.  
  
“Damn you, say it in a way I can understand!”  
  
“Crock of shit.” He agreed. Kirk’s head wavered, sometimes appearing to be in twos or threes. “Cut it out.” He said gruffly, which only made the problem worse. He clung to the tattered gold sleeve, seeing for the first time the cracked and crazed nail beds and the flayed skin. He remembered that he made his body from stardust, from a meteorite that had fallen into a lake. It wasn’t out of vanity but he had been curious to know if a body made out of stardust would be different than one made of air. At any rate, he had not wanted to anger Demeter any more than he had when he shot Hades with his golden arrow.  
  
Ruefully, he hoped that she forgave him. He had always loved the peach orchard she gave him as a wedding gift. Even through floods and droughts the trees had flowered beautifully, heavy blossoms swinging pendulously through the air.  
  
He could almost hear his mother crying, barely held back by Hephaestus, watched over by all. He had never resented his mother for being free with her love but thought that the god of forge deserved better. They were kindred, his stepfather and he, a rare breed that desired monogamy and faith.  
  
Kirk was talking again frantic as blood dribbled from his lips.  
  
“It’s mine to give.”  
  
“Shut the fuck up and maybe I won’t put you in the agony booth for lying to me.”  
  
“It’s my right.” McCoy said, delirious. And it was. Just because his grandmother had stripped him of his powers didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. Just because he couldn’t use it didn’t mean that others couldn’t. “Damned infant.” He pulled Kirk down for one last kiss and closed his eyes. “Grow up Hera.”  
  


***

  
All around them, strange men and women and everything in between appeared like flowers and greenery after the sudden rain. Kirk ignored them as he slapped McCoy’s ruddy face, glazed with sweat and bloating in the desolate sun.  
  
 _‘It’s mine to give.’_  
  
Kirk wasn’t a doctor. He had never been taught to preserve life, only to take and conquer. But now he held the power in his hands. He didn’t know what to do.  
  
“Wake up!”  
  
McCoy lurched, his spine arching as he drew in a ragged breath. Blood speckled the air as Kirk struggled to fit the mask over his face. He never gave a thought as to why he could breathe in the less than safe atmosphere. “That’s it McCoy, hang on. The cavalry is coming.”  
  
But of course they weren’t. What Kirk was hearing was the Enterprise, cutting through space and awaiting her captain’s return. He wouldn’t be able to keep him alive forever.  
  
“You,” Kirk pointed his phaser at Adrestia. “Fix him, now.”  
  
The war goddess sneered, lazily kicking her skirt around her ankles.  
  
“I must say Cupid; this one's got _balls_.”  
  
“Give it back to him.” Another coached, blond and blue-eyed, pressing his fingers against the side of his face in a disturbing semblance of a Vulcan mind-meld. And the scene changed to that of the sickbay where medical officers reeled about, taking readings and samples. Kirk snarled at them and they kept away, only Chapel brave enough to ask that he move. Though they knew not of the godly gift he had been given, they had the sense not to get too close.  
  
“The power you took.” Harmonia clarified, kissing him chastely on the sweaty forehead. “Give it back to him.”  
  
“How?” He demanded, grabbing her wrists. A severe-looking woman pulled the younger goddess back.  
  
“Enough”  
  
The woman near the surgical suite let out a noise of protest, her lips creasing into a perfect pout. Another time, another place, he would have ordered her to his quarters and told her to wait there. But this was more important. _McCoy_ was more important.  
  
“ _Hurry_ —!”  
  
“Take it back you son of a bitch.” He hissed leaning down as a ventilation tube was forced down the unconscious man's throat. McCoy’s eyes fluttered, a hint of green before it disappeared. “ _We don’t owe each other anything_.”  
  


***

  
Through the corner of his eyes he saw Ker, thwarted once more. He saw his sister, laughing victoriously at yet another battle won. He saw his grandmother, thunderous in rage. He saw his brother, wrapping himself around one of his nurses. He saw James Kirk who had wings pinioned like a feathered butterfly. And he breathed content; happy because this child-psychopath found something within him to save, happy because for once, he was the one leading the chase.  
  
Happy because he was loved and to hell with what everyone else thought.  
  


***

  
“Am I god?”  
  
His legs fell apart like that of a paid whore’s. Kirk rutted against his hip, his nipples red and inflamed from the other man’s teeth. McCoy moaned, his cock trapped between their bodies, slick and full as he writhed. Kirk touched him tenderly, pressing one, two, three knuckles against his entrance but not penetrating, enough for him to come undone. “Am I?”  
  
“Will I survive your ego if I say yes?”  
  
Kirk smirked and slowly sheathed himself inside the winged god. “ _Fuck_ —”  
  
“So what’s my name then? Something cool like Thanatos or Hades, maybe ooh, Ares.”  
  
“All taken and that’s my father you dick.”  
  
Kirk hummed and rubbed his stubble-rough skin against the inside of the older god’s knee. McCoy shivered and keened, his skin pebbling when the blond took a generous mouthful of flesh and began to suck. “Anteros!”

  
The blond god came with a shout. Instinctively, he seemed to grasp that it was his name. He pulled himself out, curling possessively around the McCoy’s side.

“What does it mean?”

McCoy’s voice, when he answered, was like an echo. It felt like a sign and a promise all rolled into one. It was like a prayer and a tribute, the first upon his altar.

“ _Requited_ ”


End file.
